It’s described above but I don’t know what it is

S-Gene Target Failure – added in an edit. It’s the proportion of Lighthouse lab Pillar 2 (community not hospital) tests that do NOT detect the spike protein (three genes are tested, Spike, Nucleocapsid and Open Reading Frame or orf). Used as a proxy for UK variant which is missing two amino acids in the spike protein at locations 69/70 and hence not picked up. The Indian, South Africa and wild type strains are S-gene target positive – hence the proportion of other strains is 1-SGTF. Hope that is clear?

Yes, thanks 🙂

@nickc

Thanks for the link CG, that’s a depressingly familiar picture

Just as a follow on, you may be interested to read from the same place under “views” a piece by Copperfield that critiques the letter. Certainly food for thought imo.

Slight detour: under English regs, when can you have other people stay overnight in your house, if not in a bubble? Is it 17th May?

Is it 17th May?

I really hope so. I need to get home to see family 🙁

I think it is. We have the kids’ grandparents coming to stay straight away… they haven’t seen them for over 16 months. I’m mentally preparing for all the “how tall!” comments already.

Diabetes in particular is going to create more demand for health services given the likelihood of developing it is apparently increased by Covid-19 infection.

Hmm. Or the obese and overweight who have a much worse outcome from Covid are actually undiagnosed/pre-diabetic, and this is highlighted once they’re in the system.

The GP surgery letter is interesting (if poorly judged for a surgery that wants to stay in business). My brother-in-law was a GP (died 2017) and had a term for this: sh!t life syndrome. Not a job I could ever do, for sure.

Things just keep getting grimmer in India – some back-of-the-envelope estimates of excess deaths in the tens of thousands per day. Truth is no-one will ever be able to find out the true figure.

India reports another 400,000+ cases, 4000+ death day

A sustained level of horribleness

And its not correct

True number surely closer to 25,000 deaths, 2-5 million infections today

Lots of ways to estimate but here's a simple one

Look at the crematoriums

Thread

— Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH (@ashishkjha) May 9, 2021

Christ that’s grim reading

Horrendous in India, but no one over here takingbany notice as we can soon have little hugs.

My understanding was that India had quite a well developed bureaucracy as far as recording population went, even in the rural areas? Might be wrong, but we may get some accurately shocking data further down the line.

the numbers are horrific, a quick BOTE calculation says that for a population 20x the size of the UK, and we suffered 1300 deaths/day at our peak in January, 25-30K per day is not unlikely at all on a like/like basis. It’s not that easy – different healthcare provision vs generally younger population, etc., but it’s an indicator.

Other way – reporting 4000/day and scaling down to UK size that is 20/d which is us at end of April. Simply not credible, IMHO.

My understanding was that India had quite a well developed bureaucracy as far as recording population went, even in the rural areas? Might be wrong, but we may get some accurately shocking data further down the line.

Possibly, but I’m confident that it will be politically expedient to assign as few of those deaths to Covid as possible.

Horrendous in India, but no one over here takingbany notice as we can soon have little hugs.

That’s a bit unfair, people have been through the wringer here as well. Folk can be forgiven for thinking of kith and kin

That’s a bit unfair, people have been through the wringer here as well. Folk can be forgiven for thinking of kith and kin

Yeah, sorry, my comment did not come across well. I was trying to say that the scale of the Indian crisis has been overtaken in UK media, even though it’s got substantially worse and serves as a reminder that “we” are not properly protected until the world is protected.

Too late to amend my rather flippant sounding post now.

The problem I think seeing the disease in places like India is the scale of it is just mind boggling. The level of death is indescribable.

I read a tweet this morning of a woman in touch with a service desk to get help loading a product, and of course the service desk is in New Delhi, she says while they were waiting for the remote log on to load they made small talk, and he revealed that he’d lost a family member every week/10 days or so, there was just him and an uncle left…I can’t imagine where to start with that.

Per capita mortality in the U.K. peaked at double the baseline rate. If one assumes the same across other countries, then one might see 20-25k deaths per day in India at peak. The U.K. has an older population and the over 85s were disproportionately hit. However the doubling was seen across all age groups consistently.

I imagine the reported 4000 is about 3-5 times lower than the true value, and the eventual collation of death certificates will show this. You can’t just hide the dead in a functioning democracy. Of course if 4000 was correct, then they are nowhere near the peak compared with other countries.

On the subject of my previous question a few pages back about returning to the gym:

RJ – my thoughts, please note these will not align with many posters in this thread:

the gym is legally open.
the risk of you ‘catching’ covid from gym eqpt which hasnt been sanitised to death is really really small.
the risk of you catching it in a packed spin class would be somewhat higher (but not because someone forgot to antibac your saddle and grips)
seems you are able to minimise your risk by visiting during quieter periods, cleaning your own equipment….. so thats positive.

if you are concerned about taking it to your parents – stop seeing them till its all clear, or revisit your homegym cantbearseditis or a really difficult to manage scenario, dont visit your parents after going to the gym without some period of self observation/isolation.

I always went in quieter periods anyway, usually on the way home from visiting friends and family or sometimes in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep! The plan is to now go on the way back from helping my parents out (maximum time between the gym and seeing them) and avoid the morning/evening rush as much as possible.

I’ve just started going back to my gym (Pure gym) and the cleanliness seems good. They’re doing a deep clean every night, and every piece of equipment gets cleaned down after every use by the user with anti bac wipes and pretty much everyone seemed to be doing this. Every other piece of equipment was closed off so you’re never that close to anyone else.

I messaged the gym’s head office about my concerns and as a previous customer they offered me a free visit to chat to the staff about them (no training) which I did earlier today. The staff were perfectly open about it being a worry for them and that they’ve been very proactive on enforcing the rules on members. I asked why and the two I spoke to said straight that if they don’t the place could be closed due to an outbreak and that’s them both out of work. Can’t argue with that mentality! So I’ve joined again and will see how it goes over the next few weeks.

I messaged the gym’s head office about my concerns and as a previous customer they offered me a free visit to chat to the staff about them (no training) which I did earlier today. The staff were perfectly open about it being a worry for them and that they’ve been very proactive on enforcing the rules on members. I asked why and the two I spoke to said straight that if they don’t the place could be closed due to an outbreak and that’s them both out of work. Can’t argue with that mentality! So I’ve joined again and will see how it goes over the next few weeks.

That’s good to hear. Very fair of them to be that open and allow you a visit to see if you feel comfortable.

https://twitter.com/JHWeissmann/status/1391878547342598157

I know I’ve said that we’ll possibly never know how well lockdown really works on an absolute scientific basis because there is no ‘control’ experiment

But for anyone claiming it doesn’t because “Sweden”, can we just declare that argument over now?

Other way – reporting 4000/day and scaling down to UK size that is 20/d which is us at end of April. Simply not credible, IMHO.

Agree – the 4k figure is, I assume, based on health care reported deaths. So the middle and upper class of the population, who can afford healthcare. There no mention of the lower class and unreported death toll – and seems to be an unwillingness in the media to investigate if the figures are different here.

@theotherjonv I’m certainly no anti-lockdowner, but as that’s cases per 1 million, and we measure cases per 100,000 Sweden is sitting at about 47 per 100,000, not much more than the UK and we’re well ahead in terms of vaccines.

Or have I got that completely wrong? (every chance!). 🙂

FWIW I’m very pro lockdown, for the simple reason we didn’t really understand any other way to control early last year, and then we didn’t really know how deadly/transmissable the Kent variant was, I don’t think there was any other option.

Can you not add the UK to that chart, usually an option with OWID

Edit yes you can, but I’m failing to embed the image

That’s showing UK at around 30 per million?. According to numbers I seen yesterday, then UK is ~22 per 100,000, so 220 per million?.

Or am I being dense? 🙂

@Nobeerinthefridge I think you’re confusing new daily cases with something else. There were 15,327 new cases in the last 7 days (https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/) and UK population is about 67 million (Google), so about 15327/67/7 = 33 per million new cases as a 7 day average.

Aye, I get the maths, I think the per 100,000 is weekly new cases.

Let’s compare UK and Sweden against not-UK and not-Sweden. Cases data from OWID site from today:

Spot the difference:

I think it’s pretty clear that the UK is doing something right at the moment.

That’s comforting to read.
Although the number of infections in Bolton have doubled in a week. Authorities urging people to have a test without symptoms. Let’s hope in that area they can get on top of things.

Outbreak at that school has pushed Erewash to top of the national table apparently – we do need to stay cautious.

point of the graph I posted was that Sweden was frequently held up as having controlled their pandemic without strict lockdowns. Compare to its (culturally similar) neighbours, it seems they didn’t.

As I say we can’t truly know as you can’t split a country in half and lock half down and let it run in another half. And you can’t really compare different cultures / economic variable countries either. But SW vs FI and NO is not a bad guesstimate comparison.

TL:DR – lockdowns work. Vaccination works. Both together works very well……

I think it rules out the nonsensical seasonality arguments as well. The other countries look no better – as noted by the tight confidence interval and inter-quartile range. Lockdown and vaccinal immunity work.

at the moment.

we do need to stay cautious.

Let see where we are in June eh?

Outbreak at that school has pushed Erewash to top of the national table apparently – we do need to stay cautious.

What if I offered you a deal? We can “stay cautious” but also stop wearing masks in school classrooms and corridors. How does that sound?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-57059407

My 18 year old only has 3 more weeks before finishing college,but says he’d be happy to keep wearing a mask as he feels it’s possibly helped reduce spread at the college – quite a few positive cases there since last September, small groups of friends having to isolate but no obvious in college spread, ie the contacts isolating don’t appear to gave caught it

14 year old said last night – as we drove past said school – “what the heck are they doing for it to spread so fast?” Again, a few positive tests at her secondary school but again, no obvious in school transmission.

Fwiw, the academy with the outbreak is a new build and we wondered if the rapid spread may be due to their ventilation system maybe? Reports on the local news last night suggested that cases of the Indian variant in Nottingham are a cluster somewhere else and not the school as some had suggested

I can’t reconcile the removal of masks in schools for teens this term with keeping cases low enough to prevent emergence or spreading of new variants. Why not vaccinate teens over the summer break and stop mask wearing in September?

I can’t reconcile the removal of masks in schools for teens this term with keeping cases low

Schools are safe and have been since forever, remember?

We have (most) kids in school now, let’s keep ‘em there for the rest of term. Why risk sending more kids home again?